Monday, 15 September 2008
So the other day Joey Comeau (who is a Canadian with a degree in linguistics who makes a great webcomic just like Ryan North hmm1 ) pointed out some great words I didn’t know before, which are idiolect and ecolect:
An idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of word selection and grammar, or words, phrases, idioms, or pronunciations that are unique to that individual. Every individual has an idiolect; the grouping of words and phrases is unique, rather than an individual using specific words that nobody else uses. An idiolect can easily evolve into an ecolect—a dialect variant specific to a household.
Yes! The comments on that post led me to some other related words: Idioglossia and cryptophasia, which are essentially the same thing:
Idioglossia refers to an idiosyncratic language, one invented and spoken by only one or a very few people. Most often, idioglossia refers to the private languages of young children, especially twins. It is also known as cryptophasia, and commonly referred to as twin talk or twin speech.
There are a number of fascinating recorded cases of cryptophasia, probably the most bizarre being June and Jennifer Gibbons.
Okay, okay, last one: a hypocoristic, hypocorism, or hypochorisma is “the lesser form of a given name”, essentially a diminutive. The wiki article has a huge list of diminutives for names in a bunch of languages. Did you know “Nacho” is a hypocoristic of “Ignacio”? Nachos are named after their inventor, Nacho Anaya!
I really like words you guys
- Who is listed on Wikipedia as “Ryan M.[citation needed] North”, which got me thinking that “[citation needed]” would be a great modernization of a Dillinger-era medial nickname, à la Roger “Terrible” Touhy or John “Jake the Barber” Factor. [↩]
September 15th, 2008 at 08:39
hairsuit! like fursuit, but less lame.
also, if you are going to grow your hair/beard out anyway you should shape it into various creatures or shapes, like a topiary.
good word:
ammoniacal: solutions containing ammonia
A-maniacal solution
ho ho
September 15th, 2008 at 01:17
Nate is hilarious. When I think of Hair Suit I think of the Catholic interpretation of Mary Magdalene in which she literally wears a dress of hair that is growing from her head.
I have a friend who majors in Speech Pathology and I imagine she can say some things about my oddities regarding language, which is a side effect of living in so many places and having a learning disability in which my brain is a bit odd (and frustrating) in regards to language.
I find language to be simultaneously fascinating and frustrating.
September 15th, 2008 at 03:45
Heather: Ammoniacal! We should compile a list of words you can’t not pun with!
If I can get enough hair and hair products perhaps I could sculpt a Mousse Moose. Or a Hair Bear.
Renee: There’s a theory that the word “Magdalene” comes from a Talmudic expression for curling hair, implying that she was…a hair-dresser? Ho ho.
What are your language oddities, if you don’t mind my asking? I can only imagine how moving around so much would affect language acquisition.
September 15th, 2008 at 03:56
Also: Mary Mag’s been the target of a lot of character assassination by the church…she deserves redress!
(She’s often depicted with red hair.)
September 15th, 2008 at 04:49
It is very charming, but you really can’t resist punning can you?
Apparently my learning disability is called Dysnomia (I’m sure I misspelled that), which literally means “poorly named”. Basically the wiring between the various language parts of my brain is really crappy. Really Crappy. So I’ll have a concept fully formed and understandable in my head, and when I try to explain it, it won’t come out right. Or I explain things in very meandering ways as I kind of work my way around the concept until I can explain it right (which is why you’re probably almost getting a freaking dissertation). Or I just can’t remember the damned word or how to say something. Sometimes it will present itself the opposite way - I’ll misinterpret something or hear something wrong or if too much is going on at once I just cannot process, and sometimes it gets to the point of ridiculousness. The more tired I am (or any other impairment on the brain) the worse it gets. On the flip side, the wires for the visual part of my brain are made of uber awesomeness (therefore the obsession with drawing for longer than I can remember, very strong connection and reactions to visual things and the fact that if there is something visual and moving in front of my face there will be no concentration aside from on that). As a result, I communicate much better online, that is, in text, than in person. I see words stronger than I hear them. So when I see the word Chaos I really want to say Chah-Ohs instead of Kay-Os and have to check myself. I can learn the visual aspects of a language (reading and writing the sounds) much more quickly than the understanding and actual communication. Unsurprisingly, I’m a bookworm, and the medium of comics really curls my toes (almost to the point that I now rarely buy books that don’t have images as in important component of it’s content). So that’s more or less that, in regards to my learning disability.
As for moving around a lot… I generally don’t have an accent, or at least it doesn’t last long. In Trinidad I had a Trini accent, in Wisconsin, I had a Midwest accent, in Sounth Carolina I could say Miss, Ma’am, and Y’all like the best of them (though I imagine I didn’t completely pick up that accent). Here in California, unless I mention it, no one suspects I’ve been outside the state because I apparently “don’t have an accent”. There are also some grammar things that I do that are a mix of the British and American systems. My handwriting is a mix of both (I write British G’s and American M’s and N’s for example). There are a couple words here and there that will betray me. I say Rutbeer instead of Rootbeer (don’t know where that one came from) and I’ll vinyl (as in win) instead of vinyl (as in vine), which come from Trinidad. And there’s probably other things as well. Um…I suppose that is more than enough of an answer so I better stop before it gets worse.
(Do you have any language oddities aside from the seeming inability to resist a pun?)
September 15th, 2008 at 08:27
The first part of your reply actually sounds a lot like me, regarding the meandering workings-through in explaining ideas, visual orientation, and bookwormishness especially. Other than that, I’m mostly just a language and typography nerd?
It relates to how I particularly like comics because as a medium it affords me an opportunity to draw a whole lot and experiment with design (layout) and writing. I tend to see writing in comics as closely related to, or an application of, visual poetry: using placement, arrangement, typography/handwriting, etc. to influence meaning and pacing. It’s a synthesis of language and visual art that speaks especially well to me.
September 15th, 2008 at 08:59
My learning disability is much milder these days since I know it’s there and how to work with it (my parents discovered it when I was four but didn’t tell me until I was fourteen - basically because they were forced to). But as a kid… oofda. I actually avoided writing as much as possible until about college when I became friends with an artist/writer (the one who got me addicted to comics actually) and had the fortune of having a teacher who somehow made writing un-scary and pleasant. Not that I ever rush to write a paper mind. And then there was the… yeah, there’s a reason that I’m going to try going to a therapist again.
That’s really interesting how interested in the design you are. I notice it sometimes, if it is really obvious (like in Kabuki or any of the Acme Novelty books), but otherwise it is fairly invisible to me. I certainly buy comics for inspiration in the the art and styling (The Fountain graphic novel completely blew my mind and as a result I developed a total art-crush on Kent Williams, which isn’t altogether surprising considering that I already liked Klimpt and Scheile and he definitely gets inspiration from them).
That’s really cool though. I imagine I’d get a kick out of learning about how the design and typography affects the art and the impact on the viewer. Then again, I’m a deeply curious person.
But yes, synthesis of language and visual art speaks well to me as well. I get to be told a story and have gorgeous art too? Pretty hard to get much awesomer than that in my world.
September 15th, 2008 at 09:26
@heather
If we’re talking about our favorite chemistry-related words, I would like to throw calomel out there. It’s just about the most soothing word I can think of: like a combination of caramel and calomine but in the form of a reference electrode used for measuring electrical potential in redox reactions.
@everyone
I first discovered the word hirsute sophomore year, shortly after a conversation with my roommate in which he described a girl he had met as “swarthy.” Swarthy means “dark skinned,” not “hairy” as he had intended and I told him of this and that the only other word I could think of that meant what he meant was pilious, which is not a real word, but sounds so much like one and sounds so much like it should mean hairy that I still often use it to this day¹.The next day, I told my friend Meghan the story, and she told me that I could have used “hirsute.” EXPOSITION OVER.
Also, I happen to be wearing my “Capitalist do it Ruthlessly” shirt today, the same one that I’m wearing in the comic. IAN HOW DID YOU KNOW??
And finally: I think Jennifer Gibbons’s first story, The Pugilist sounds like a fantastic premise for… anything. From the article:
I really want to read that.
¹ The OED requires only five published uses of a word before they will include it in the dictionary! So, if you find yourself writing a paper for a journal, maybe try to throw it in?
September 16th, 2008 at 06:14
Quondam had come up twice since I’ve been up here. I had not a clue as to what it meant but now I love it.
Dictionary.com has a shining example of it’s definition/use that it attributes to some guy named Bret Harte:
quondam
adj. That once was; former: “the quondam drunkard, now perfectly sober”
Though in my opinion, the words perfectly and sobre should never be found next to each other.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:53
10 GET
Renee: “oofda”…awesome. Have you read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Making Comics? They’re two of the best books on comics theory around. And they’re comics! Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art is supposed to be very good too, though I haven’t read it yet.
Nate: I forgot about pilious, but I’ll use it every chance I get. And calomel does sound very soothing, though it makes me think of camels.
Frank: great word! You should write a story about former auto workers that move to Switzerland to work on CERN and call it Quondam Mechanics.
September 20th, 2008 at 02:47
Frank! Do it! Although bettering yourself for the sake of a pun is more of T. rex’s territory.
October 7th, 2008 at 04:55
If you are a fan of John Hodgman’s work, you may have heard of the furry lobster that was discovered in 2005 in the Pacific. Its binomial name is Kiwa Hirsuta.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwa_hirsuta
October 7th, 2008 at 08:17
Well, I’m glad to hear that the Japanese immediately started making K. hirsuta plush toys after it was discovered.
October 7th, 2008 at 09:16
Clearly, this means that every thing that John Hodgman published and will published will come true one day. HAIL AR